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Microsoft Update Brings Thousands of PCs to Standstill

by , 4:15 PM EDT, October 25th, 2007

Microsoft installed a resource hungry search application on thousands of PCs Wednesday, bringing them to a standstill, according to The Register on Thursday. It happened even though administrators had configured their systems not to use the search tool.

The incident is the second in as many months where administrators thought they had locked down their machines and had obtained configuration control.

The problem starts when the search software starts to index the PC. It's particularly bad when it happens on a server. "The admins at my place were in a flap this morning because Windows Desktop Search 3.01 had suddenly started installing itself on desktops throughout the company," one administrator said.

"I'm slightly pissed of [sic] at M$ right now," said another administrator of 3,000 PCs responding to the problem on the Internet. "All the clients have slowed to a crawl, and the file servers are having problems with the load."

Microsoft provided an unfathomable explanation of the problem.

"The revelation that Microsoft is pushing yet more installations not explicitly agreed to by administrators is not likely to sit well with this same vocal contingent," Dan Goodin reported.

Observer Comments

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View Name:Guest
Subject: My face hurts
Close Name:Small White Car Posts: 1950 Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Subject:

Quote
article wrote:
"I'm slightly pissed of [sic] at M$ right now," said another administrator of 3,000 PCs responding to the problem on the Internet.


Wait, he actually SAID "M$" in the quote? How do you say that out loud? MmmmmMoney?

View Name:Guest
Subject: M$
View Name:Guest
Subject: Oh come on
Close Name:Brutno Posts: 195 Joined: 28 Aug 2002
Subject: Excuses, excuses

I read Miscrosoft's "explanation" of what happened and it seems to me they are much better at developing spin than they are at developing software. What rubbish.

View Name:Guest
Subject:
View Name:Guest
Subject: Classic!
View Name:Guest
Subject: Ballmer Speaks!
Close Name:Mikuro Posts: 448 Joined: 15 Jun 2002
Subject:

Quote
Brutno wrote:
I read Miscrosoft's "explanation" of what happened and it seems to me they are much better at developing spin than they are at developing software. What rubbish.

That's saying quite a lot, since after reading it, I have to say that Microsoft is apparently really, really bad at developing spin, too! That explanation was barely coherent.

Close Name:geoduck Posts: 1721 Joined: 30 Dec 2003
Subject:

What I don't understand is why M$ isn't on the receiving end of thousands of lawsuits over this kind of crap. I mean seriously it isn't like the first time they have screwed up not just desktop systems but critical servers, but I haven't heard anything about suits for real damages, petitions for class action status, or anything like that. Yet apple sells an '8Gb' Nano that holds 7.45Gb of music once it's formatted and they get sued.

I also don't buy the MS 'explanation'. The last place I worked we specifically and deliberately set our systems to not auto update because the updates would often force a reboot taking them off line until someone could go down to the basement and log in (for security reasons we did not set them to auto log in). Despite this, at least once a month we'd come in and find half of our servers off line because of something M$ pushed down overnight. We had the top Windows people in our organization looking at our systems and they all said they should not be getting updates unless we manually downloaded and installed them, yet our systems kept getting patched automatically. It’s just more M$BS.

Close Name:Brutno Posts: 195 Joined: 28 Aug 2002
Subject: Agreed

Quote
Mikuro wrote:
Quote
Brutno wrote:
I read Miscrosoft's "explanation" of what happened and it seems to me they are much better at developing spin than they are at developing software. What rubbish.

That's saying quite a lot, since after reading it, I have to say that Microsoft is apparently really, really bad at developing spin, too! That explanation was barely coherent.


Yes, that's a mouthful, but even with the spin being horrible, it's still better than their explanation. MSFT has always been better at spin, though. How else to explain all that fantastic vaporware?

Close Name:Sir Harry Flashman Posts: 627 Joined: 08 Feb 2007
Subject: Lawsuits

Quote
geoduck wrote:
What I don't understand is why M$ isn't on the receiving end of thousands of lawsuits over this kind of crap.


The Stockholm Syndrome perhaps.

Close Name:srs007 Posts: 2 Joined: 03 Oct 2007
Subject: Smegheads

I spent 1/2 my day wednesday dealing with problems caused by this and we only have 32 computers here. That was 1/2 day that I could have been productive programming. Needless to day, I can't get that time back from microsoft.

View Name:Guest
Subject: HAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!
View Name:Guest
Subject:
View Name:Guest
Subject: Mac Users
View Name:Guest
Subject: Linux is way better
View Name:Guest
Subject: Re: How do you say that out loud
View Name:Guest
Subject: As a Mac user I cannot but laugh
View Name:Guest
Subject: Typical Windows user reply
View Name:Guest
Subject: Holleoh
View Name:Guest
Subject: Please wake up
View Name:Guest
Subject: Why no lawsuits? Read the Eula....
View Name:Guest
Subject: Lawsuits against Microsoft
View Name:Guest
Subject:
View Name:Guest
Subject:
View Name:Guest
Subject: Sigh
View Name:Guest
Subject:
View Name:Guest
Subject: From a PC user
View Name:Guest
Subject: wow
Close Name:Intruder -   TMO Mac Specialist Posts: 2922 Joined: 07 Jul 2004
Subject: Re: From a PC user

Quote
Anonymous wrote:
If Mac is so superior why is there a Web Site called macfixitforums.com.


Umm, for the same reason that there are numerous Windows fixit sites, like FixMyVista.com. Things break. Nobody has seriously claimed that the Mac OS is perfect.


Quote
Microsoft is the best software company out there...


You aren't serious, are you?

Close Name:macinnerd Posts: 1681 Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Subject:

Quote
Anonymous wrote:
They are so special that the iPod doesn't connect to corporate email.


Is the iPod supposed to be able to connect to corporate email?

View Name:Guest
Subject:
View Name:Guest
Subject: RE:Microsoft is the best software company out there...
View Name:Guest
Subject: O get a life,
Close Name:macinnerd Posts: 1681 Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Subject:

Quote
Anonymous wrote:
At 399$ a pop I would expect it to connect to corporate email.


Ooh, iPod touch, gotcha...

Just saying iPod makes most people think of iPod nano or Classic though.

View Name:Guest
Subject: Boy I love my Linux box
View Name:Guest
Subject: Leopard
View Name:Guest
Subject: LINUX
View Name:Guest
Subject: Linux
View Name:Guest
Subject: this article
View Name:Guest
Subject: Pronunciation
View Name:Guest
Subject:
View Name:Guest
Subject: They had luck!
Close Name:macinnerd Posts: 1681 Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Subject: Re: They had luck!

Quote
Anonymous wrote:
If the were using Apple Software they had a standstill everyday!


That makes no sense, by the way.

View Name:Guest
Subject: #@!$ you apple slaves.
View Name:Guest
Subject: Lil comment for ya
Close Name:macinnerd Posts: 1681